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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25665961">Cowardly sacrifice</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeekPaleblood/pseuds/SeekPaleblood'>SeekPaleblood</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Black Sails</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:48:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,004</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25665961</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeekPaleblood/pseuds/SeekPaleblood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Divergent since SE 04 EP 05.<br/>What would have happened if Eleanor and Max chose to betray Flint in a most lowly way, to achieve a more peaceful end?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Cowardly sacrifice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melis_Ash/gifts">Melis_Ash</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>       "She's raising a banner!" said Utley<br/>       Eleanor's heart was pumping with such force that her whole chest was trembling. All of her mistakes came back to haunt her, through the men on the beach and through that spanish warship on the water. She had thought of all the men she had crossed as having been dealt with, yet a man's wounded pride was not a small feat.<br/>       "British colours!" yelled Utley again "She' flying the governor's banner! It's him!"<br/>       She took the spyglass  and saw it for herself, her dear Woodes coming back … How could it be? All the relief she had felt soon melted away in sheer awe of the facts … he went out with a sloop and came back with a warship!<br/>       "Ma'am … shall I begin moving the guns to the beach?"<br/>       "Yes … tell me when it is done"<br/>       The last fight for Nassau, a fight with uncertain outcome and to an even more uncertain future … If Flint won, it was clear the the island will stand in conflict for the next few years … Yet if Woodes won, the future was more uncertain than people thought. She knew of the debts she had and how impossible it would have been for him to repay them if the whole population of the island was dead. It would have been years until Nassau would make a profit from commerce, if all of the men perished in a fight.<br/>       "They will all be preparing for the fight ahead of us " she heard Max saying "Would you like to tell me what it is that you are preparing to do?"<br/>       The third option … There always is a third option.<br/>       "I am preparing to do what you had told me to do long ago"<br/>       She looked at Max's frowning face, her lovely face … The face of a woman who had managed to play men better than her. The woman who was always more cautious and wise tha her, the woman she had underestimated …<br/>       "I need your help" Eleanor went on "I want you to help me send a message, directly to Flint and John Silver … Tell them I want to trade the fort for the cache of gems and our safe passage … "<br/>       Max's face nodded a 'no' and her eyes fell down in disappointment.<br/>       "All of us, Max, all of us!" Eleanor said as she rushed to her and even dared touched her face "I know that it is awful of me to do right now what you wanted back then … I know it hurts, but I want us all to be alive and free from all of this. You, me, my husband and his men! Flint can have his island and can deal with what comes after by himself, then-"<br/>       "- Eleanor, you do not understand!"<br/>       And she could not ignore the hurt in Max's voice … And Max had been right all along, all this time. Perhaps it was time to let her own pride aside and just … listen to her.<br/>       "I would run away with you" Max went on "You would run away with me, but him … your husband, do you think he is a man to accept this?"<br/>       "I will not give him the option to refuse me!"<br/>       The way Max's eyes raised up to meet hers gave her hope. Somewhere, they have not lost their link, their ability to think the same thoughts. The past could not be washed away.<br/>       "I will use the fort to stop his approach until the deal is done!" she told her, yet Max still kept shaking her head "Then we will vacate the fort with the gems and he will have no option but to accept!"<br/>       "There is no such thing as 'no option' for a man like him, in a warship on the waters! If you want to do something and take matters into your own hands, Eleanor, then you have to present him with an outcome over which he truly has no control over"<br/>       They both stared at each other and realized they were right back at where they began … Caught between men who would not balk, who would not give back, until one of them was dead.<br/>       "Help me get the message to Flint" Eleanor insisted "Tell him that I wish to parley. I will meet with him through the tunnels"</p><p>****</p><p>       Max waited alone, though she was surrounded by people. There were little chances of Eleanor coming back with Flint or even John Silver offering themselves as collateral, yet it was worth it. She wanted to be there to try and reason for it herself, yet if the pirates saw the both of them, they would have become suspicious … Suspicious of the very thing they proposed to do .<br/>       And yet the steps she heard on the gravel counted one extra set of feet … And there he was, Flint, unarmed! Perhaps she had underestimated Eleanor.<br/>       "I was jealous" he told her, as soon as the captain was ushered into a cell "As I waited here for your return, I admit that I was jealous of your new husband … You were so unwilling to run away with me yet now so willing to risk so much only because he appeared .. And I hated you"<br/>       Eleanor only slowly nodded her frowning face and she could see how her chest trembled from the pulsing of her heart.<br/>       "But now I realize" she went on "This is not about the governor, this is not about me … it is about something else"<br/>       "It is … "<br/>       What exactly it was, she could not name and Eleanor would not voice, yet it did not matter. The warship would be in the range of the beach in an hour or less and they had Flint locked in a cell beneath them. They even had scapegoats to blame … They would present a story to the pirates, a story of the cowardly English soldiers who had crossed Eleanor's instructions and had murdered Flint in his lone cell. A story which the pirates would believe, yet how would the governor take the news?<br/>       "He will be angry" Eleanor uttered, with a trembling lip "I would have taken for him a clean victory and deliver him a corpse"<br/>       A man's wounded pride was a curse. Take away a man's status, a man's trophy and all goes to chaos. They grip and they crawl on their knees to cling to what ever it is they believe makes them true men. Yet sometimes it was a tool, or even a blessing.<br/>       Woodes Rogers was not a man who would have sighed of relief at seeing his enemy dead through a lowly scheme, murdered under the pretense of a truce. Though he had tried to hide it, everybody knew that he had once butchered a crew under the surrender flag. He hid it and tried to not let himself defined by it …<br/>       "It needs to be me … " said Eleanor, as if they were both linked by the same thoughts<br/>       It needed to be one of them, yes ... perhaps the both of them.<br/>       History did not note traitors, cowards and schemers, yet they existed nonetheless. The world was full of them, living plentiful lives over bribes and stolen treasures, resting their heads on the pillow at night.<br/>       "I need your pistol" Eleanor told Utley<br/>       Max could not help but admire the way Eleanor talked to that man. She did not ask for permission, she did not hesitate, no, she simply ordered the man, and she could tell that he even tried to hide a smile as he handed her the weapon.</p><p>****<br/>       There were so many things she wanted to tell Flint, in his last moment, yet at the last step she had changed her mind about it. All of it.<br/>       "So many men here" she told him "Always doing their best to bend it all to their benefit"<br/>       But had she not used them all for her benefit? For the benefit of the ones she loved? For so long she had defined herself as the one going against them, in spite of them, that she had never figured out that the opposite of it was not staying aside …<br/>       "My father, Scott, Charles, you … "<br/>       "Woodes Rogers … He's really so different from all of us?"<br/>       <em>No</em>, she wanted to tell him. <em>He is just like you and I love him just as I had once dreamed of loving you.</em> But there was no use in making him understand …<br/>       She heard the door creek open and Max slid in, as quietly as a cat. Max … the lovely Max, who had never tried to be like a man, to beat them at their own game. The woman who had not defined herself in relation to all others, but just through herself.<br/>       The most honorable thing she could do was to take the insult and shame upon herself. She was already hated, already thought of as a traitor … what was one more time?<br/>       For long she had despised other women, with her thoughts bent by all those men speaking of honor and honesty … Bent by all those who despise scheming and plotting, no matter how good the outcome.<br/>       "I am sorry" she told Flint "But you must understand why it has to be me"<br/>       His face changed as her voice started trembling and she drew out her pistol. He was a prisoner, unarmed and alone …<br/>       "Eleanor, what has become of you?"<br/>       What had become of her? She had murdered eight men for Max, she had crossed Scott and her father, she had done numerous bloody things in the name of a good outcome, yet that man thought himself as <em>so different from the rest of them.</em><br/>       She needed only a fraction of a second, a small window of time to just shut her mind up and let her finger act and it will all be over, with no way of taking it back. She had so often sent other men to do the lowly work, to pull the trigger, to plant the knife into somebody and she had so often thought of them as little pawns.<br/>       She aimed, yet her hands were trembling and the man in front of her tensed and she knew he was ready to grab her. He was ready to stop her, to try and reason with her, to convince her of his grandiose ideas, as the first muffled sounds of gun shot were heard from outside.<br/>       She needed to do this to end it all. It needed to be her who'd be known as betraying Flint, at tricking and killing a defenseless man and this was her great sacrifice as a woman … as a mother … To end a conflict in a way that no honorable man would.<br/>       The bravest thing she could do was to give up her pride and to let herself be known as the coward.<br/>       A stubborn teardrop clinged to her eye and as she blinked, Flint went up, as quick as lightning, reaching for her pistol, yet a shot was heard and he stopped mid-motion, with a bloody and smoking little hole appearing right in his chest.<br/>       "I am sorry" Eleanor yelled as Flint stumbled to the floor and as Max was frozen, with her smoking pistol still aimed in front. "I am sorry"<br/>       Flint's lips were trembling in anger, yet no words came out of him, though he surely had enough life left in him to speak. The door slammed open and she heard the steps of soldiers coming in, yet she did not turn to look at them. She kneeled to the floor, next to the dying man … a man who has her friend, her ally …<br/>       She felt Max's gentle fingers on her shoulder and though she could not make out what the soldiers were speaking, she could understand her lovely accent<br/>       "It had to be done … " Max said " … And I have hope this might be the last time we need to do it … to avoid a world in which we would have this done to us … "</p>
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